I'm thinking of the smooth green hills where writing comes from, leaf-tips barely peeking from twig-tips, cat's-eye green, the air cooly smooth against the cheek as a refrigerated egg.

The new green hills are green, as green as memory, and as old. The house, as usual, a wreck, the first sowbug of spring advancing across the floorboards, beyond control, the millipede that rushes up, all summery, from the bathtub drain. Come Sunday we'll go out for dim sum again, the elderly at rest behind their newspapers, the young in party clothes, the moonwhite noodles thick and fragrant on the plate. That the living can feed upon such stuff. Dead matter, dead meat.

If a word is repeated, let it be the contexts that rhyme. Not glibness, that party trick -- having to dunk one's head in a martini reciting "Skunk Hour" over and over, until you're sick.

No language now, only the day and circumstance. Not the pedigree of words, what they might be in French, or whether this is of significance.

I'm thinking of the smooth green hills where writing comes from. Two kinds of thinking. What kind of writing when it rains.

Roo Boorson again tonight because I will most probably leave her books in my book room here. I do admire the movement and variety of thought in this poem. This discovery of her and through that anthology, other Canadian poets has been a highlight of this year.

And this is my own grove, which I will leave soon to manage itself until next year.